"Yes," said Abe severely, "that's the truth, but not all the truth. You just tell the whole truth, 'Tilda, and trust mother for the rest."
Matilda went limping home and told her mother the whole story, and the good woman was so sorry for her that, as the girl told Abe that evening, "she didn't even scold me."
"BOUNDING A THOUGHT—NORTH, SOUTH, EAST AND WEST"
Abe sometimes heard things in the simple conversation of friends that disturbed him because they seemed beyond his comprehension. He said of this:
"I remember how, when a child, I used to get irritated when any one talked to me in a way I couldn't understand.
"I do not think I ever got angry with anything else in my life; but that always disturbed my temper—and has ever since.
"I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down, trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings.
"I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a hunt for an idea; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over, and had put in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend.
"This was a kind of a passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now when I am bounding a thought, till I have bounded it east, and bounded it west, and bounded it north, and bounded it south."
HIGH PRAISE FROM HIS STEPMOTHER